5 Keys to Setting Effective Business Goals

Surviving and Succeeding in the Corporate World

Even if you feel as though you’ve hit your glass ceiling at work, there is always room for improvement and advancement. It’s easy to become complacent in the workplace if you feel as though you’ve peaked, but you should always continue to challenge yourself and set goals that will encourage that advancement. Setting business goals will motivate you towards thriving and succeeding in your industry. In fact, it may even spur you to changing your industry if you realize you’re better suited for something else. However, these goals need to be well thought out and implemented at a time that is going to benefit you the best.

Here are five keys and tips to setting effective business goals so you can survive and succeed in the corporate world.

Be Practical

If you set unrealistic goals, you will continue to be disappointed time and time again. When it comes to setting a goal for yourself, you need to be practical in its designation. If you’re a first level executive, it wouldn’t be realistic to set a goal of becoming the CEO in a year. All that does is set you up for failure and causes the whole reasoning behind setting these goals to lose their meaning.

If you’re a first level executive, you should instead set a goal of moving up to the next level within a year. This is something that could feasibly be done as long as you put your mind to it. If you’re just a data entry clerk, make your goal to move up to becoming an executive assistant. No matter where you are in life and in your career, there are always going to be opportunities to move forward.

Set Your Deadline

As we mentioned above, a year is often a good deadline for your goals, depending on the goal at hand. Some goals may take less time while others may take more. You can’t expect to move from an entry level position to a salaried executive position in less than a year, but you can move up in your department. An improper deadline can be as unrealistic as some of the goals we mentioned above, so you should put some serious consideration in the amount of time you feel it would take to meet and exceed that goal.

Be Specific

When setting your goals, you can’t be vague. It can’t just be “move up in the company”. That can be left to all sorts of interpretation. You need to be specific when wording your goals so you know exactly what you’re striving for. If you want to be the manager of the financial department of your company, that is exactly what your goal needs to state. If you leave it as just working in management, that could be for any department and not necessarily one that utilizes your skills to their advantage.

Don’t Be Afraid to Make Adjustments

Life happens, and there is nothing wrong with realizing the goals you set a year ago aren’t exactly what you want now. There is nothing wrong with reviewing your previous desired achievements and making adjustments to the goal you have in front of you. Maybe you’ve had a child and realized that the goal position you set forth is one that will take up a lot of your time. It’s ok to reconsider your milestones and change them accordingly. There are still ways to move up in the world without sacrificing your family time.

Celebrate!

Once you’ve met and achieved your goal, it’s time to celebrate! The whole point of celebrating a goal being met is to remind yourself that you can do it! No matter what “IT” is, you’ve done it once so you know now that you’ll be able to do it again in the future. Just because you’ve marked one goal off your list, doesn’t mean it’s time to rest on your laurels. Rather, once you’re done celebrating one goal being met, it’s time to move on to the next.

Setting goals is a way of life that will ensure you continue moving forward. As you meet and exceed these goals, you will experience a boost of confidence, motivation, and experience that will be important for meeting those next goals you set forth. Hopefully these tips will help you on your journey up the corporate ladder!